Abstract:
The biggest changes to shake up architecture in a long time may have their origins in the very, very small. Nanotechnology, the understanding and control of matter at a scale of one- to onehundred-billionths of a meter, is bringing incredible changes to the materials and processes of building. How ready we are to embrace them could make a big difference in the future of architectural practice.

Already, this new science of the small has brought to market self-cleaning windows, smog-eating concrete, and toxin-sniffing nanosensors. Three hundred nanoengineered products are now commercially available; $32 billion worth of them were sold last year, with sales expected to top $1 trillion by 2015. But these off-the-shelf advances offer only a taste of what's incubating in the world's nanotech labs today. There, work is under way on nanocomposites thin as glass, yet capable of supporting entire buildings, and photosynthetic coatings that can make any building surface a source of free energy.